PolicyLink partners with local organizations that have a vision for equity in their communities, and together we build a strategic roadmap to achieve that vision. Responding to local conditions and local goals, PolicyLink offers new frameworks, tools, ways of working; research and analysis; targeted communications and media support; tailored technical assistance and capacity building; and facilitates civic engagement and coalition building. This approach takes time; it requires a commitment to the work of building relationships with local organizations and understanding their needs. The process increases the capacity of community leaders to engage in developing and advocating for policies that are directly tied to the community's knowledge of local challenges and potential solutions.
Community
Action to Fight Asthma (CAFA)
PolicyLink provides technical assistance
to twelve coalitions and four regional centers across California who are
part of Community Action to Fight Asthma (CAFA), an initiative that works
to advance policies to reduce asthma triggers for children in schools,
in
homes, and outdoors. In the second year of this three-year project PolicyLink
has worked with community coalitions to:
CAFA members have had a number of successes. They have increased the visibility and understanding of the environmental triggers for children with asthma and have galvanized advocates and policymakers in their local communities and at the statewide level to pursue needed policy changes. This includes working with environmental groups to ensure that agricultural vehicles are subject to the Clean Air Act and advocating for improved oversight of diesel emissions from trucks, a known asthma trigger.
In 2006, CAFA is focusing on two policies:
PolicyLink / Joint Center Research Project
In a 2004 partnership with The Health Policy Institute
at The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, PolicyLink engaged
in a study, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, designed to better understand
the most pressing issues facing African American and Latino communities
in their fight to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities. The Joint
Center for Political and Economic Studies seeks to inform and illuminate
the nation's major public policy debates through research, analysis, and
dissemination of information that will improve the socioeconomic status
of black Americans, expand their participation in political and public
policy arenas and promote communication and relationships across racial
and ethnic lines.
Through a review of the literature and interviews with African American and Latino community health leaders and elected officials, PolicyLink and the Joint Center produced four issue briefs that summarized key interview findings, shed light on national promising practices and suggested policy changes that could reduce these health disparities. Interview results confirmed PolicyLink fundamental beliefs that the social, economic, and physical environments of local communities—environments shaped by overarching racial inequalities—affect health and contribute to health disparities in deep and long lasting ways.
The reports address four critical aspects of health disparities’ adverse effects on African Americans and Latinos: overall community factors that influence health; disproportionate rates of asthma in these communities; neighborhood conditions that discourage healthy eating and physical activity; and the unique disparities facing Latino immigrants.